Though we have successfully broken the Deathloop, there are still secrets that have yet to be revealed, things that we didn’t cover on stream.

But I don’t care about any of that. To be honest, the only thing I want to do is kill Colt. Let’s join Juliana for a couple of invasions to protect the loop and commit some good ol’ fashioned patricide.

Thumbnail by Sam Callahan.

As any Dark Souls player can tell you, invasion mechanics can be frustrating depending on how they get implemented. If the two players are evenly matched, then the one trying to make progress in their campaign has a 50/50 chance of being crushed through no fault of their own, and those odds only get greater if they’re lured into fighting in an area with other AI enemies present.

The way Deathloop addresses this problem is by skewing the odds in favor of the Colt player, whose game is getting invaded. Most obviously, Colt gets the advantage of having three lives compared to Juliana’s one. Juliana cannot win by getting a single lucky blow. She’s got to be smarter and manipulate the level so that she can decisively kill Colt thrice. Meanwhile, the Colt player can absolutely win a battle of attrition just due to having a larger health pool.

Additionally, Colt is the only one between the two of them capable of hacking security and turrets. Once he does so, Juliana can disable them by destroying them or taking out their battery (just like her opponent), but she has no way of hacking them back to her side. Once Colt claims control, those hazards are permanently his to manipulate for the duration of the duel.

That said, Juliana does have one big advantage: Every other character in the world is on her side, and she can point them to Colt if she knows his location. If he gets into a loud enough fight, it will also be pointed out on her HUD so that she can quickly move to intercept him. Technically, she also has the Masquerade power to switch appearances with another character, but I’ve not found many practical uses for it in my time playing.

It sets up a tense and exciting game of cat and mouse I never tired of through all of my time playing, even when we were on stream. There’s a thrill that games can only ever truly recreate by pitting human players against each other, one that no NPC could ever replicate. And Deathloop plays heavily into that by creating these dynamic scenarios for Colt and Juliana to fight in.

Every aspect of the mechanic has been lifted from other contemporaries, but none have mixed and combined them in exactly this way before. I can only hope that others took notice.

We’re on the home stretch, with a viable route to take out seven of the eight visionaries in a single day. Now, the only one we have left to track down is Juliana herself. And once that’s done, we can finally close out the DEATHLOOP.

It’s time to end this once and for all.

Thumbnail by Sam Callahan.

There were a lot of people who had negative reactions to the big twist we uncovered during our investigation into Juliana, namely that she is Colt’s daughter. Maddie Myers from Polygon talked about it in her piece on why she hated the story and the ending, despite loving the game itself. I want to say off the bat that those opinions are valid and I do not wish to take away from them.

However, I did not have that same takeaway. I don’t think this is a fantastic story, but it works for these characters and the world they inhabit. Juliana has been harboring a grudge against Colt for what might be an ungodly long amount of time as she’s learned to take joy in fighting him both verbally and physically. Even if Colt had a good reason, he still murdered his daughter in order to break the loop, and she had to feel it happen. It’s only natural that she’d fuck with his head every chance she got.

And part of why she feels comfortable doing this over and over is because there are no true consequences in the loop. Once the loop is gone, she just doesn’t have it in her to keep going anymore. There are a couple of layers to the relationship to unpack, and I find that’s pretty cool.

Halo is also pretty cool. And next week, we’ll be jumping into the new campaign. I look forward to having no idea who any of the new people are since I never played Halo Wars 1/2 or Halo 5.

Somedays, you have a great big plan for what you want to do on stream. Other days, you just forget those plans and need to do improvise.

Good thing I now have Halo: Infinite’s multiplayer to fall back on.

The longer I play Halo: Infinite, the more frustrated I grow with its progression system for its Season Pass, despite the amount of genuine fun I am having with the game. Sure, they’ve added a persistent quest for getting matches in, but that’s a slave to a deeper issue.

Right now, as it stands, the game is incentivizing me to play modes that I do not enjoy. First, it was Tactical Slayer, then it was Free For All. Unlike most games with similar systems, I can’t reroll my quests every day. Instead, I have to earn the right to reroll in level-up rewards or wait for the quests to reset at the end of the week.

Even worse, I saw one of my friends playing the other day, and he had to quest to get headshots with a Pistol. So he entered a match and did visibly worse because he was using his pistol instead of the standard AR or any of the weapons on the map.

Considering we used to just award XP based on what happened in the middle of the match, this feels like a regression, one that hurts the game long-term. I understand the need to engage players and possibly try to ensure they regularly log on. However, that should not come at their expense, either by forcing them to play sub-optimally or play modes they don’t enjoy just to complete quests.

And a large part of what makes it all the more galling is that these mechanics exist, so poorly implemented, in a Halo game. It underscores the difference between the era of gaming I grew up in and the modern era as it exists today. While in many ways, games have progressed significantly in recent years, especially in the realm of accessibility, this is one of the more regressive ways the industry has evolved.

At this point, we’re in the final stretch. We have a schedule set up to take out five of the eight visionaries in a single day. We’re getting close, but we’re not yet ready to complete the perfect day.

The investigation must continue if we want to have any hope of achieving our goals and breaking this Deathloop!

Thumbnail by Sam Callahan.

Next week, we’re likely going to finish the game. If time permits, we’ll even be able to do a few invasions as Juliana before we wrap up. There’s a lot we’re going to talk about, so get ready for it!

Well, it’s certainly been a few months since our last outing here in Runeterra. I wish I had a better excuse, but the truth is that I just wasn’t in the mood.

But we’re back now, and a new mode has arrived to the game in the form of the Path of Champions. And that serves as good an excuse as any to dive back in.

Modes like this are surprisingly important for digital card games like this, because it’s another avenue for players to keep logging in if they tire of playing against other people. It’s something Hearthstone realized with their adventure modes.

And card games lend themselves to these semi-roguelike single-player adventures. It’s why games like Slay the Spire find purchase in the hearts of so many. Modes like this allow players to build crazy combinations that are just impossible in normal play, as you can see plainly.

I’m glad after that it seems to be around for the long haul, because when I’m at lunch it’s a good excuse to pull on my phone and run a gauntlet.

We’ve built up a significant base of power in a very short amount of time, continuing to establish the base by which we might arrive at our Perfect Day. The pieces are being arranged just so, and we need only continue to manipulate them to our own desired ends.

Let us continue to stack the odds in our favor, in this next chapter in our Deathloop run.

Streamed on Twitch.
Thumbnail by Sam Callahan.

Critics have already said much about the invasion mechanic and how it impacts the core experience of Deathloop. But it’s one thing to hear about it, and quite another to experience it.

Admittedly, the examples I’ve shown on invasions during this series have not highlighted the strengths of the mechanic (because the Julianas I’m fighting seem to get extremely impatient and just throw themselves in a 1v1 fight they can’t hope to win). However, I’ve had my fair share of excellent invasions. There’s something to be said for how the simple addition of a single player out to sabotage me changes the way I think about the level.

It adds tension, since our opponent may not be as easily tricked as a horde of AIs that insist on funneling through the murder door so we can effortlessly shotgun them one by one. And while we have the benefit of two extra lives, they have an entire level’s worth the mooks and hazards that they can use to do us in.

There are some times where it can be frustrating, but it general the mechanic adds so much to a typical run in Deathloop that it makes that frustration worth it.

At last, we have completed the tutorial and mastered the basic mechanics at play with Deathloop. Now it’s time for us to begin our investigation in truth to identify the method by which we will assassinate all of the Visionaries of the loop in a single day.

Something you’ve probably already begun to notice is that with the exception of Juliana, all of our targets are thoroughly unlikeable people. Some more than others, but all of them have a personality quirk that makes them insufferable. For us, the player, that merely makes it all the sweeter to take them out.

Additionally, we’ve finally started to discuss the big campaign. Although we have as much time as we need during each phase of the day, we only have four phases in which to operate: Morning, Noon, Afternoon, and Evening. If we only kill a single target during each phase of the day, we’ll only have enough time to take out half of them.

For us, that means we need to figure out ways to take out multiple targets during the same “phase”. We’re already making progress in that direction, by uncovering Charlie and Dia’s secret meeting and the way to get Egor into the party with Alexis. But as you’d expect, there are complications that arise from each of those solutions that must also be accounted for.

And to top it off, we still know nothing of how to take out Juliana. Though we can see the puzzle coming together, we still need to continue investigating if we wish to arrive at the perfect day.

While I’ve only recently played through the campaigns from the Master Chief Collection, I’m far from new to Halo. Back in my elementary and middle school days, my friends and routinely got together to play Halo 2 split screen. I never owned it, as I was a PlayStation kid, but I played more than my fair share.

So it brings me no end of pleasure to once more plunge myself into Halo multiplayer. Let’s find out if I’m still decent at shooters.

Hell yeah! I’ve still got it!

The real problem I still foresee is the Season Pass, and how little experience is acquired over the course of a play session. Time will tell, and obviously it’s still being finalized, but even with the changes it seems slow to develop.

That aside, I had a blast diving back into Halo. Even divorced from my nostalgia, there’s a lot here to sink my teeth into, and it’s a wonderful experience to take part in.

If at first you don’t succeed, die, die again.

I’ve been so excited to play this on stream, so let’s skip the preamble and get right to the meat of it.

The thing the struck me most recording Deathloop compared to other games is how much I was genuinely laughing at the quips and dialog from both Colt and Juliana. A large part of my enjoyment comes from the absolutely incredible performance of their actors, Jason E. Kelley and Ozioma Akagha respectively. They have great chemistry and personality that stands out among many of the other games out there.

Aside from that, most of this episode involves tutorials. As a game, Deathloop is unique in the way it mixes mechanics from any number of games. For that reason, it makes sense that they need to spend all this time helping players gain their bearings before setting them loose on Blackreef.

This was easily one of my favorite games to come out this year, so I look forward to sharing it with you all.

We’re in the final stretch, with only 3 orders left before we’ve completed all of our objectives. Our last infusion of Sim Points has given us enough to afford all the upgrades we need to finally complete “the run”.

The horizon is in sight, and it’s time to cross it into a new frontier.

Thumbnail by Sam Callahan.

Honestly, the real trick of the “final run”, such as it is, comes in the preparation. All I did was follow through on the plan I had set out for myself at the end of Part 3. There is some tension involved due to tight time windows and execution, but a couple of well-timed Delay Loops to keep Corruption Levels low, and prevent enemies from respawning, ensuring a safe and easy escape.

Less safe and easy was the final story mission, and capstone to our time in the simulation. Admittedly, no small part of that was my own doing. The last part would have been significantly easier had I spent fewer Neuromods on Typhon upgrades for the “Volunteer”. Typhon lures could have easily cleared the way for me in that even.

On the bright side, I now know that Burrow gets around barriers, so I assume that is the “intended” method for completing the quest when all else fails and RNG just doesn’t go our way.

It’s a lesson learned, especially as we move on to the next game in our schedule. I’m beyond excited to start Deathloop, and I hope you are too.